SMU students gathered at the O’Donnell Lecture and Recital Hall in the Owen Arts Center Thursday evening to watch the vice presidential debate and to debate the issues themselves. The audience decided Palin won the televised debate, 30 to 25.

After the debate, audience members discussed health care and women’s rights, as well as education and the economy.

Senior Erika Paul, a political science and public policy major, said that with Palin, “we finally have a woman supporting conservative women, not just liberal.”

SMU Forensics debater Jennifer Smart said Palin is a breath of fresh air to the Republican Party and politics in general.

Smart said? the debate featured a lot of finger-pointing by the Obama campaign at the McCain campaign.

Olu Sonubi, a graduate student in acting at Meadows School of the Arts, agreed.

“Biden was much more articulate on foreign policy,” he said, adding that he also was impressed by Palin’s performance.

Ben Voth, professor of communications and director of SMU Forensics, said he would rate Palin’s overall performance in the debate as a B+ and Biden a B.

But he also said: “I don’t think both did as well as I thought they would do.”

Voth said Biden was good on the issues, but Palin related to the audience and had a hometown feel that gave her an advantage.

After watching the presidential debate, students were invited to take part in a debate led by SMU Forensics students. Palin supporters won the student-led debate, 45 votes to 10.

Technical difficulties during the televised debate caused many audience members to leave. The debate was shown via projector, using the live Web site feed from cnn.com. The Web site froze and shut down, causing some people to watch the debate elsewhere.

Democracy Matters helped organize the debate with signs leading to the lecture hall, flyers on voting information, and optional sign-up sheets to come to their meetings about politics and the election.

SMU is part of the national program for voter education DebateWatch 2008. SMU Forensics sponsors the debate-watching events, with two more planned for the remaining presidential debates Oct. 7 and Oct. 15. The deadline to register to vote is Monday Oct. 6 and early voting begins Oct. 20.